If you know anything about movies, then you'll have heard about The Matrix, one of the greatest motion picture achievements of all time, IMO. Reguardless of my thoughts on the film though, I enjoy Don Davis' incredible, atonality-driven score. It's unfortunate that movies like this emphasize ridiculous song compilations, and label them "soundtracks" as opposed to the true and often wonderful soundtrack scores. This score has recieved acclaim from many average film score fans, but has not recieved the kind of critical acclaim that it truly deserves. Most long-time film music fans and reviewers have dismissed this as simple noise, as with Goldenthal's Alien3, which is even more unfortunate. What is FORTUNATE is the fact that it is one of the best-selling of 1999, because of it's appeal to many non-soundtrack fans, although nothing came close to the sale of Williams' new Star Wars score.

While there is not much enjoyable melodically, there is an abundance of extremely exciting action music. Particularly exciting on this soundtrack is Ontological Shock, which follows a huge build-up to a helicopter crashing into the side of a sky-scraper, and the effect is extremely enjoyable to hear.

The only real problem that I have with this is that, like most varese scores, it's just too damned short! In fact, my favorite cue from the entire movie (the "Subway Showdown" cue) has been left off. It's really a shame, because I would trade track five for the mentioned missing track any day of the week. Plus, I would like to have some of the more spooky music from the first half of the film on the disc. Fortunately, for those of you who own DVD players, the music has it's own isolated track so you can hear the score in it's entirity, complete with commentary from composer Don Davis himself. His commentary isn't very informative, but it is interesting none-the-less.

I would recommend this, but if you can get the DVD, then the varese CD really isn't worth it.

The Matrix is Copyright 1999 Varese Sarabande. This review is written by and is the property of Isaac Engelhorn and does not reflect the opinions of Tripod.